Certified Threat Hunting Professional eCTHPv2 Review

Cybersecurity is an exciting career with different specialty, which requires skills, network and certification to validate your skills. It is a big ocean full of knowledge overload that if care is taken, a newbie starting may be drown as it gets exciting fields in it. At a point in my career, I was curious about ethical hacking, then I feel that’s what cybersecurity entails. Later I determined not to go into technical side of it, I wanted to dwell on the process side of it which is GRC (Governance, Risk and Compliance). I felt GRC professionals do less and earn more. But something changed the ordeal. I was privilege to work with Mobolaji Moyosore on a national research (That was my first cybersecurity job, thanks to my mentor), and for three months I was addressed as Threat Intelligence Analyst. I knew little about the field threat intelligence as of then. Let me spare you my boring story.

My thirst for career firmness, harnessing my skills led me to have a conversation with a dear cybersecurity colleague of mine, I told him I don’t want just any theoretical multi — choice certification, I want practical hands on experience and he recommended eLearnSecurity. That was not my first time of hearing about them but I was so curious and I read about Threat Hunting Professional. It looks so promising but there was an issue, I don’t have enough money for INE (eLearnSecurity training platform) subscription but fortunately, I belong to a national cybersecurity group that aids interaction Naija Security Force, there I mentioned my need and the generous Jeremiah helped me by sharing his details.

My learning journey started last year November, it was educating and worthwhile. eCTHPv2 on INE is categorized into the following three sections

1. Introduction to threat hunting: comprises of introduction threat hunting, threat hunting terminologies, threat intelligence and threat hunting hypothesis. Here I learnt how to use AlienVault Open Threat exchange, FireEye, Inc. IoC Editor, Yara rules and Redline
2. Threat Hunting Network & Network Analysis: here I learn a lot of network analysis and hunting using Wireshark, network miner, RSA Netwitness and hunting web shells using Loki and log parser studio.
3. Hunting Endpoint: This is perhaps my favorite part of the package as I learnt endpoint hunting using Redline, malware & memory analysis using volatility, SIEM using Splunk and ELK.

All the above mentioned training partition are hands — on, with live machines to play with. Another fantastic feature of INE platform is that it provides links to external resources.

I wrote my exam and passed after 6 months of studying (Although It was 3 months intensive preparation) and I must say, I got the value of the training and exam when my certificate landed 30 days after I wrote the exam. The exam lasted 2 days (48 hours) and 2 days (48 hours) for reporting. A reporting template comes with the package and the exam fee is $400 only.

Conclusion

Kudos to the eLearn Security for changing cybersecurity certification narration by providing hands on experience. if you are doubting eCTHPv2, try it out and you won’t regret it. Do well to subscribe to INE training platform, do all the labs and get your hands dirty. I forgot to add it that the examination is practical based, no single multiple choice question. You will be provided with scenarios and expected to solve the puzzle